Gas leak detection is an important practical problem. In many cases, it is desirable to rapidly search for gas leaks over a large region. One approach that has been considered for such applications is to mount a gas leak detection instrument on a moving vehicle, e.g., as considered in U.S. Pat. No. 3,107,517, U.S. Pat. No. 3,444,721, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,164,138. However, conventional approaches for mobile gas leak detection suffer from significant disadvantages. Typically, these disadvantages include one or more of: 1) difficulty in distinguishing a leak from background, 2) difficulty with distinguishing a leak from other possible sources of the measured gas, and 3) lack of an estimated distance to the leak source.
Accordingly, it would be an advance in the art to overcome these difficulties.